http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/13/r...y-dossier/
Quote:Delanda est Cathargo (in English “Carthage must be destroyedâ€) are words that come down to us from ancient history. They were spoken by the famed Roman soldier, statesman and orator Cato the Elder, and have never been more relevant than now, today.
The Rome of our time is Washington, Russia is Carthage, and today’s Cato the Elder is US Senator John McCain, whose quest for conflict with Russia is unbounded. Indeed, for Mr McCain the belief that Russia must be destroyed has been elevated to the status of a self evident and received truth.
Origins of the ‘dodgy dossier’
It was McCain who passed the ‘dodgy dossier’ on Trump to the FBI, after receiving it from former UK ambassador to Russia, Sir Andrew Wood. Contained within the dossier is information purporting to reveal how Trump has been compromised by Russian intelligence over various sexual encounters with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room. Compounding the scandal, adding to the lurid nature of it, are reports of the existence of a second Russian dossier on the president-elect.
The dossier’s originator has been revealed as former British MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who now runs a private intelligence company and has, according to reports, gone into hiding in the UK, supposedly fearing assassination by Russian agents.
The fact that Mr Steele hasn’t set foot in Russia for a number of years and reportedly, on behalf of Trump’s enemies within the Republican Party establishment, paid for the information contained in the 35-page dossier, recently released with the caveat that its contents cannot be verified, should have been more than enough to have it instantly dismissed as, well, fake news?
In his most recent article on the dossier for the UK’s Independent website, Patrick Cockburn writes, “I read the text of the dossier on Donald Trump’s alleged dirty dealings with a scepticism that soon turned into complete disbelief,†prior to observing how, “In its determination to damage Trump, the US press corps has been happy to suspend disbelief in this dubious document.â€